Time was, the word "consulting" was synonymous with "unemployed." In the change-driven 1990s, however, independent consulting has become an increasingly attractive option for today's" self-navigators" of the job market - highly motivated people in nearly every field who thrive on the demand that, as individuals, they assume a much greater share of career responsibility.
For everything from education and training to midcareer advancement, job satisfaction, financial planning, and retirement, career experts say, people are learning that they must cut their own path. For some people - including chemists and chemical engineers - the ultimate in career self-direction might be independent consulting.
"Self-reliance is the message we have subtly been trying to get across," says Corinne Marasco of the American Chemical Society career services department. By choice or by circumstance, more and more chemists realize that the era has ended when a single employer would provide for employees until retirement and beyond. Successful people tend to take a positive view of the situation, she says. With change and increased responsibility, the most independent of all - those who have ventured into full-time consulting - welcome the opportunity to completely control their time, earning power, and career development.
As many as 27,000 ACS members report being engaged in some kind of consulting work (C&EN, Feb. 26, page 43). Anecdotal evidence seems to confirm the numbers: Demand for workshops about consulting at ACS regional meetings and other meetings and workshops has been growing, Marasco says. Seminars on managing independent careers or small chemical businesses at the ACS national meeting in Orlando played to full audiences of professionals at every stage of their careers.
"Consulting is a growth area," Marasco says. But it is not for everyone. Experts say it involves specific sets of career skills and personal traits, such as a tolerance for uncertainty and disappointment. The rewards can be substantial, but they come with certain risks and with definite hazards and downsides.
For people who are thinking about consulting work as an employment option, Marasco continues, it helps to define it. She identifies several types: independent consultants who most often work alone from home, employees of consulting firms, and employees of the "big six" consulting/accounting firms - Price-Waterhouse, Andersen Consulting, Ernst& Young, KPMG Peat Marwick, Coopers& Lybrand, and Deloitte & Touche - that have begun to fold small science consulting firms into their larger business.
One of the authorities on consulting of any kind, Herman Holtz, author of" How to Succeed As An Independent Consultant" - a popular "how to" as well as "how not to" guide for anyone considering consulting - gives a more general description: "I view consulting as a way of practicing a profession." A consultant is a specialist within a profession, writes Holtz. Consulting is not in itself a profession.
Consultant and Shell Chemical Co. research chemist John K. Borchardt describes himself as a "generic type" consultant. Like a majority of chemistry consultants, his is not a full-time business. He offers his expertise in such areas as career development and job hunting, and most of his consulting time is now devoted to writing about consulting and other employment issues for chemists.
Chemists at midcareer or who retire early with specific areas of expertise - product development, environmental chemistry, and government regulation are specialties with high demand - have among the best chances for success as independent consultants within the chemical industry, Borchardt says.
But competition is stiff, he cautions. Even well-known experts who wish to make themselves available as consultants, he says, cannot ignore the need to network with potential new customers and to aggressively market their consulting services.
During the first waves of chemical industry downsizing in the early 1990s (see page 50), Borchardt says, many people thought of consulting as an obvious, and perhaps the easiest, employment alternative. "They thought people would beat a path to their door. But nobody beats a path to your door these days, even if you have a better mousetrap.
"Wallflowers don't make it in the consulting business," Borchardt says emphatically. "You have to be able to walk right up to people and introduce yourself." Regular attendance at relevant professional meetings is vital. And consultants need to be there early. At technical sessions, he says, consultants should hang around before and after the meeting to make introductions, chat, and hand out business cards. "Nowadays, you have to be a good people person." In fact, Borchardt and others emphasize, there is probably only one key to success for any consultant: marketing.
"Guerilla marketing" is the approach recommended by Geoffrey E. Dolbear, consultant and founder of G. E. Dolbear& Associates in Diamond Bar, Calif. Consultants should make a list of everyone they know, he says, call those people and ask for more names of people who might use the consultant's services. Ideally, Dolbear says, this process will generate a list of 200 to 300 names. After calling everyone on the list and asking about potential consulting jobs, consultants should go back to the top of the list and call everyone again. "You really have to be good on the phone," he says. "If you can't - or won't - you won't be good in consulting."
Dolbear says it's rarely as difficult to settle people's technical problems as it is to sell them on consulting services. Industry managers and others don't hire consultants based on technical knowledge and skills alone, he says. A consultant often is hired because he or she has prior acquaintance with the manager." The element of personal trust" can be a deciding factor in landing a consulting contract, Dolbear says.
Some people simply cannot face the threat of rejection implicit in any marketing effort, or the anxiety provoked in talking to people they don't know. Those people should reconsider independent consulting, Dolbear and others say, or be willing to pay someone else for marketing services.
According to Dolbear, consultants fall into two main income categories: those who earn about $25,000 per year and those who earn in excess of $100,000. Marketing efforts, he says, decide a consultant's fate.
Dolbear says he has a regular routine of calling semi-cold contacts, and he keeps an electronic Rolodex of about 400 names of people who are likely business prospects. Both Dolbear and Borchardt also write for a variety of journals and other publications, including such ACS magazines as CHEMTECH and Today's Chemist at Work. Dolbear publishes his own newsletter, The Freebie, that covers topics ranging from processing technology to personal productivity. Aside from having fun and making new contacts, both men say these efforts keep their names in circulation in the wider chemistry community - an effort that always makes good business sense.
On the more basic side, self-employed consultants today enjoy a far easier and less expensive task in setting up the actual business, says Borchardt. A desktop computer with fax and e-mail capabilities, along with a letter-quality printer and basic office supplies should be enough to get any consultant started in business.
"My office is a converted spare bedroom," Dolbear writes in an account of the start-up of his consulting business." My son, then 20 years old, moved out of the house in early 1989. He helped me clean out his room and repaint it. I moved in my books, computer, and desk, and bought some file cabinets. I have made several improvements since then, adding a two-line telephone, filing cabinets, a fax, and more bookshelves."
The key to setting up an office, Borchardt says, is having the ability to communicate rapidly and effectively with customers.
Dolbear recommends the addition of a spreadsheet program for those consultants who plan to do their own accounting, and he recommends purchase of a laptop computer with a desktop docking station for those who do not already have a desktop computer. The setup provides a fully functional office wherever the consultant travels, he says. Regular disk backups are a must, he says, and he recommends off-site storage. "In big companies, losing your data can be distressing, but in a small consulting business, it would be disastrous. Off-site storage of backup tapes can save a business in case of a fire or natural disaster."
With an office and hopefully a few clients, the next hurdle for consultants is establishing and negotiating fees. Different consultants work from different formulas. Most experts agree that it is nearly impossible for a consultant to earn at their previous salary level during the first year or two of consulting. In fact, some of the biggest pitfalls in consulting work, Borchardt says, result from charging too little or underestimating the time that will be spent on a project. Like everyone else, however, consultants learn from their mistakes.
New consultants, Dolbear and others say - especially people used to receiving a regular paycheck - need to understand that net pay is different from gross pay; that in addition to paying themselves a salary, a consulting business needs to earn a profit. And at the start of a new business, there should be plans - and money - set aside to deal with lean times.
"Recognizing that need," Dolbear says, "I went to my bank six months before I left the corporate womb and set up a home equity line of credit. Credit was easy to get while I was in a corporate job, but not so easy after the break. Bankers demand nice long financial track records when they commit money."
For determining fees, Dolbear recommends looking at what other consultants charge. Specialty and reputation can be big factors in fee determination. As a baseline, he believes $100 to $150 an hour is reasonable for professional services fees, and that earning $800 to $1,200 per day is not an outrageous goal for a consultant in chemistry or chemical engineering.
One former consultant says the key to financial success is a marketing strategy that rewards the consultants' perspective of maximum pay for minimal hours on the job. Harold H. Gunardson, who is now director of business development for Air Products in Allentown, Pa., points out that famed oil-well firefighter Red Adair - "the ultimate consultant" - was paid more the faster he could extinguish a gushing oil-well inferno.
As an independent consultant in the petrochemical industry for nine years, Gunardson says he found his niche in such areas as plant troubleshooting. For example, in Chile, where petrochemical refineries were built to accommodate the local light, sweet crude, Gunardson's expertise was invaluable when Chile began to import Venezuelan crude - notoriously heavy and sour - which, in turn, began to chew up equipment in the Chilean refineries.
In Israel, Gunardson says, he once landed a consulting project for his expertise with asphalt. "They were rolling this stuff down on airport runways and it was rolling back up like a rug," he says. The situation created a higher sense of urgency - and thus a higher price for Gunardson's solutions.
While established expertise helps anyone considering a consulting career, it is not necessarily an obstacle for new recipients of Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. Consulting firms and firms specializing in information technology for the chemical industry do hire new graduates, Marasco and others say.
In general, people with experience in industry, government, and academe are preferred candidates for work at small consulting firms, says Emery S. Conyers, president of Technology Sciences Group, a 27-member firm in Washington, D.C., that specializes in helping clients - particularly pesticide and industrial chemical manufacturers - find solutions for regulatory problems. People who are looking to become experts in certain areas and people who are able to work successfully with clients are always valuable consulting firm employees at any stage of their careers, he says.
While work at a consulting firm does mean freedom from some of the requirements of independent consulting - the mundane chores of taxes and accounting, for example - people need to have nearly the same sets of skills, says Conyers, a former DowElanco executive." They have got to understand science and they must have outstanding communications skills." For consulting on government regulatory compliance, he says, members of consulting firm teams must not only work well with clients, they must also work effectively with people at government regulatory agencies.
Borchardt agrees that consultants - independent or with a firm - must be excellent communicators and diplomats." The customer is not always right," he says, especially when it comes to finding or implementing solutions to technical problems. "But you can't say that. You have to find a way to be diplomatic and then effectively communicate the problem or solution to the customer."
And just as marketing is a mainstay for the independent consultant, bringing in new business is another fact of life for anyone considering work at a consulting firm. "It is the backbone of business," Conyers continues. But clients can also be attracted by the skills package of a firm's employees, he says. "With solid expertise, business is going to come."
Consulting in general is a growth industry, Conyers says. As chemical companies have become more cost-efficient, they have found it too expensive to keep people on staff from every area of expertise they might one day need. Seeking outside help for areas such as regulatory compliance has become increasingly commonplace. Consulting firms likely to succeed in this market, Conyers says, stay focused on certain areas of expertise. And firms that can deliver work on time and on budget will naturally thrive.
Whether independent or the employee of a firm, consultants do live and work with a greater degree of freedom and with greater earnings potential for the work they perform. "You do your job in the manner you want to do it," Conyers says. "You have the ability to exceed expectations and to be rewarded for that."
"You're your own boss," agrees Borchardt. "You pick the projects you want to work on. The downside is everybody is your boss. Everyone you work with will have expectations, and expectations that might change midcourse."
But along with the freedom, loneliness is another issue would-be consultants are wise to consider, Borchardt says." Chemists are often not people people," he says. But even for someone who is used to walking into work with colleagues every day, or simply knowing that somebody occupies the office next door, the periods of isolation for consultants can be overwhelming.
Consultants must develop strategies to deal with those periods of loneliness and work to find opportunities to mix with other people.
Self-discipline is another issue, Borchardt says. He recommends a daily "To Do" list, a daily planner, and a month-at-a-glance calendar that can help with project planning. The point, he says, is to develop some time-management technique and to stick with it.
Gunardson points to the opposite problem - knowing when to quit and avoiding burnout, especially when independent consultants have spouses or children to consider. As an independent consultant, "you're the chief cook and bottle washer. It's hard to quit at night. At 2 AM you can find yourself downstairs in the office, working."
Collecting consulting fees can be yet another issue. "Collecting money as a one-man show can be tough," Gunardson says. As much as 20% of a consultant's time might be devoted to the nonbillable hours of managing the consulting business. When dealing with large companies, he says, especially companies that might bring repeat business, "you can't sue them. You can try to get retainers or you can try to get fees paid up front. Sometimes, all you can do is park yourself in an office and be the squeaky wheel."
And self-confidence must remain high. A new book, "Careers for Chemists: A World Outside the Lab," due out in November from ACS Career Services, warns that the rate of rejection is high for consulting work proposals. Consultants must deal with that and move on to the next proposal. It is work that demands tremendous amounts of personal drive and self-discipline.
And while it is an opportunity to operate an independent business, it is not for people who want to get rich, Dolbear says. Rather, in a time of change, consulting work appeals to those with an independent spirit - people who have always been able to handle the rewards and the rejection, but who prefer to do so on their own time.
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